Arclight
by Kurusan
Summary: The light of the Soul is a curious thing. Unlike the capacity to be a Parahuman, which is extremely rare, everyone has a soul. So what happens when a Parahuman who's abilities allow him to unlock them appears in Brockton Bay?
1. Shine (1)

"Come _on,_ man."

"No."

"Pleaaaase?"

"Still no."

"Why not!? You ask Panacea, I'll ask Glory Girl, _blam,_ double date!" Neptune said, slamming one fist into an open palm to emphasize his point.

"Because in reality, the only thing I'll be asking Amy to do is to fix your spine when Victoria throws you across the room! Plus, she's seeing Dean! Have you seen the _size _of that guy?" I hissed back at him, hoping to god that no one else in the hallway was paying too much attention to us.

Arcadia was definitely one of the better schools in the city of Brockton Bay. No scratch that, it was _t__he_ best school in the city. Not only was it the best funded school in the city, it was also home to the Protectorate ENE's Wards when they were in their civilian identities. That made it the _safest_ school in the city too, since no one in their right mind would dare go after an unmasked minor. Hell, I'm pretty sure that anyone who tried would be hunted down just as hard by the E88 or the ABB as the PRT would.

Even supervillains tended to have a pretty dim view of hunting down children after all.

But that safety came with certain downsides for awkward people like me. See, I wasn't exactly the most _s__ocially capable_ person in the world. Neptune was my friend because Neptune was _everyone's_ friend, so he didn't really count. Besides him, I was pretty much a loner. Not for lack of trying or anything, it was just that making 'friends' always seemed like a chore to me more so than anything that happened naturally. Maybe I was just lazy, but it always felt like friendship was supposed to be more than just a task to complete. Regardless, that meant if bad rumours got started about me, there would be nobody to defend me. If someone decided they wanted to pick a fight with me, no one would defend me. It wasn't like I was bullied or anything just... ignored. I mean, what do you do with the kid that has no friends?

The lack of open gang violence or displays of affiliation meant that the schools social environs were largely insulated from the greater issues of the bay. Kid's who would otherwise be worried about helping their parents pay bills or avoiding the gangs instead had little better to do than play at politics. This meant that the social hierarchy was about as treacherous and vicious as a fairy high court. It was better than getting press ganged into the E88 for my bright blonde hair and sterling (re:pale) complexion, but that didn't mean it was all that enjoyable knowing that one awkward or embarrassing moment would be passed around the entire school faster than the blink of an eye.

Which meant the last thing my nonexistent reputation needed was to be seen getting rejected by Panacea or Glory Girl in the middle of lunch hour. That kind of attention made me shiver just thinking about it.

"Jaune! Come _on!_ Look I'll even go first! You can get up and join me _after_ I succeed." Neptune said smugly, shooting me what I'm sure he thought of as his 'winning' smile and running his hand through his dyed neon blue hair like he thought he was some kind of male model or something. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes at him.

Neptune was the son of two parents who I would politely describe as 'massive hippies'. They had come to Brockton Bay back in the day to 'get high and fuck each others brains out' to quote his Mom (Ew), and had promptly had their darling baby boy Neptune. They also occupied a really weird space in terms of the local gang culture. On the one hand, they were with the Merchants in all but name - a fact that was pretty much an open secret to anyone that knew them. On the other hand, unlike _most_ of the Merchants, for whom 'garbage cloak' might be considered something of a fashion statement, and the alley behind Fugly Bob's a mansion, Neptune's parents were actually mostly functional people. Yeah they had a room just for shooting up, and yeah I'd probably seen more drugs laying around his place than I would ever be comfortable with, but the two of them still managed to get up and work their 9 to 5 jobs every day, and they encouraged their son to pursue an education and get a job like any normal parent would.

Honestly, Neptune was probably the most well adjusted person I had ever met, even _despite_ his circumstances, and that fact rankled me somewhat. Especially when he pulled bone headed stunts like _this_. Neptune was definitely at least passingly popular with the ladies of Arcadia High - he was well known for changing girlfriends frequently - but he never had a _bad_ breakup. He never cheated on anyone, never kicked them out of his room in the morning to walk home alone. None of the usual horror stories or sitcom bullshit. He tended to date a girl for a few months, treat her alright and then break up with her when someone new caught his eye. As a result, there were more than enough local girls who had decided that they would be the one to make him 'settle down' as it were.

I, however, really doubted such a woman existed, and something told me Victoria (Glory Girl to the majority the school) would take it even worse than his normal victims would.

Which is why I wanted _nothing_ to do with it.

"Listen Nep, usually I would agree to that just because I know for a fact that you're going to get rejected - but even on the extra minuscule chance that you actually succeed? I still refuse." I said firmly, turning my attention away from my friend and back towards the halls to make sure no one had been listening in on us. If it was me alone, then I could probably start doing jumping jacks and still be ignored, but add Neptune to the mix and suddenly...

Yep. There it was. Despite my best efforts to get Neptune to shut up, or barring that, quiet down, I could see at least three people rapidly trying to avoid notice the second I looked towards them. Seeing that caused my mood to sour, and I took a quick glance towards Neptune, who was about as put out by the situation as a fish would about being wet.

"Fine. But when your boy is getting flown to school by Glory Girl don't be jealous~" He crooned, wiggling his eyebrows at me. I tried to imagine Neptune being flown to school by Glory Girl and couldn't help but laugh despite how much anxiety this discussion was causing me. The only image my mind could conjure up was of the amazonian superheroine flying at mach speed towards the school - while Neptune hung over her shoulder flapping in the wind like a bag of potatoes. Kind of like those videos of people being put through extreme g-forces where the skin on their face starts to pull back and flap about.

That image in mind, I found it surprisingly easy to shove the coming humiliation that would be lunch hour to the back of my thoughts.

After all, what was the worst that could happen?

-ooo-

My morning classes passed by largely without anything of note happening. Math sucked and I was only just barely managing to pass, but Gym class was okay at least. Today was one of those days where instead of doing anything particularly strenuous the teacher just had us do some laps and then play dodge ball for an hour. Neptune spent the entire time doing laps around me, probably just to prove he could, but I tried to keep an eye on Dean as he ran, keeping his pace steady and even the entire time.

I wasn't particularly afraid of the guy - he was probably one of the nicer students I could think of off the top of my head - but I was still worried about what Neptune's little stunt was likely to bring out in him. Having never had a girlfriend myself I wasn't sure what someone walking up to mine and confessing to her would make me feel - but probably not 'good'. I guess I must not have been as subtle about my observation as I thought I was either, because he turned around at some point during our run to shoot me a reassuring smile and a wink.

That smile was on my mind all the way till lunch period. Like always, I walked into the cafeteria with the ten bucks Mom left me for lunch, and fought my way through the lunch line, handily wasting ten of the thirty minutes I had allotted to me to eat. One of these days I was going to wake up early enough to make myself lunch. Like... as soon as I had a lunch bag to put the lunch in. Or ingredients in the fridge to make a damn sandwich.

Oh who was I kidding. I was going to be eating mystery meat for my entire school career.

Once I had my tray laden with with the most appetizing foods I could get a hold of, I carefully made my way through the crowds of students milling about the lunch room, navigating to my usual spot near the rear of the room - directly beside the garbage cans. Again, I wasn't 'unpopular' per say, which is the assumption you could probably make based on my terrible seat next to the smelly refuse. Rather, I just had so few friends at school that sitting anywhere else would mean I would have to sit in the middle of some other clique, or completely claim an entire table to myself - which certainly _would_ make me unpopular.

I spent the better part of the next ten minutes quickly cramming food into my mouth, hoping against hope that I could vanish to an empty classroom or something so I could relax without so many people around. For a while things were mostly business as usual. I mean, Neptune was nowhere in sight, which was fine - he was probably in an empty classroom making out with some girl who was actually interested in him, it wouldn't be the first time - the crowds were mostly ignoring me, and the mystery meat actually kind of tasted like meat.

I should have probably figured that feeling anything even vaguely reminiscent of 'hope' would be the send off though, because no sooner had I scanned the room for him once than Neptune strode through the cafeteria doors bashing them open like a gunslinger at a saloon. There was slightly more gel in his hair than usual, and he was carrying a bouquet of flowers he had apparently sprinted out at lunch to buy. I assumed that was where they came from at least. It would certainly explain his slightly flushed appearance.

"Come on Nep don't _do_ this." I groaned under my breath even as I tried to shrink into myself.

At first, I think I was the only person to really notice his arrival. It wasn't as though Neptune's grand standing was a new thing to most of us, so the student body had quickly grown accustomed to ignoring him while in action. But as he strode closer and closer towards Victoria and Amy Dallon's table, the room began to take notice, and a hush began to fall about us.

By the time Neptune had made it all the way to them I was already fighting the urge to shut my eyes and plug my ears to block out the second hand embarrassment I was getting just from watching. What the hell was Neptune _thinking?_ Yeah, he was smooth, but he wasn't 'bag a cape' smooth. Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl had been the face of New Wave for years. Despite it's current state as a mostly family based team, the group of capes who advocated a 'no secret identities' policy towards heroism had been pushing her as their most recognizable member for as long anyone had been aware of her. Not only that, but she was drop dead _gorgeous. _She had a perfect hourglass shape to her, the kind that pretty much any male human of a similar age couldn't _help_ but imagine, and the most _beautiful_ eyes. I'd once made eye contact with her - a single time mind you - for about two seconds when we were both waiting to use the water fountain, and for that split second I had briefly forgotten how to _breath_ she was so attractive.

Combined with the fact that she was super strong, basically indestructible, and could _fly,_ it all added together to create the perfect archetypal super heroine. Heck, she was widely considered to be Alexandria-lite, a not unfair comparison given she was being weighed against a member of the _Triumvirate_.You could pick any movie in theaters right now and Victoria was likely _still _more famous than them - at least within Brockton Bay anyway.

And Neptune was... Neptune was just the local cool guy. There was just no comparison. Not that any of that actually stopped him from planting himself _way_ to close to Victoria by virtue of literally sitting on the table in front of her.

"Victoria, Amy." Neptune said, his voice clearly audible to the entire gathered crowd. I winced at his first mistake - not acknowledging the other non powered members of Victoria's friend group. Maybe I just paid more attention than most but Vicky _wasn't_ actually a dumb blonde. The people at her table weren't just hangers on or groupies, they were her _actual_ friends. Dismissing them out of hand would have probably bugged her even if he just wanted to ask her what she had for breakfast. The other people at the table with her - those not greeted - shifted uncomfortably as Neptune spoke, presenting his bouquet of flowers to the blond bombshell who had stood at his approach.

Victoria took one look at the things before yanking them free of Neptune's grip and dropping them loosely in Amy's - her sisters - lap. Amy looked almost _amused_ at this occurrence, turning a dry grin on Neptune that could be charitably interpreted as 'pitying'. I'm not a particularly charitable person though, so I think I would probably go with 'malicious'.

"I uh..." Neptune started, having been put off balance by the sudden movement, and clearly unsure of how to proceed now that his grand gesture had been so quickly defused.

"Was hoping we could go for a date?" He said eventually, rallying under the watching stare of the entire school.

Victoria stared at him for a good long moment, then rolled her eyes at him. She exaggerated the motion of her head, slowly rolling it all the way from left to right and then shot a look across the assembled students that said 'what a joker this guy is' before turning back to Neptune, who had a look on his face that said he was only just now realizing how bad an idea this had been.

"No offense Neptune but there's no way I'm going to date a Merchant." She said brightly, affecting a wide smile that held absolutely zero warmth in it.

"I'm not-!" Neptune retorted, anger beginning to replace his typical easy smile and confidence before he visibly mastered himself, closing his eyes for a second to take a deep breath and then opening them again with a strained expression on his face. For a second it even looked like Neptune had gotten the message and was going to back off but-

"You totally are! Merchant colors, Merchant Parents, Merchant Kid." Victoria taunted, cutting him off and gesturing at Neptune's hair before lowering her hand back down to wave disparagingly at the rest of him.

"You bitch! You think just because my parents- no wait, my parents aren't even-" Neptune spluttered, his anger surging back up to the surface at the smug looking girl. Amy's amused look had started to fade and was swiftly replaced with a worried one as she glanced back and forth between her sister and Neptune. The mousy smaller girl slowly started to frown as the two continued to argue - very loudly, and very publicly.

I wanted to dig a hole, shove my head into it, and not resurface until this entire fiasco was over. 'Miserable' could not _begin_ to describe how embarrassing this was to watch. But more than that, I knew it was time that I stepped in. Neptune was a pompous idiot, but he was at least _my_ pompous idiot. If I could extract him from the situation without completely destroying my own reputation, then mores the better.

Hopefully anyway.

I struggled with myself over that for a moment, allowing yet more shouted accusations to pass between the pair of arguing teens. But eventually my loyalty won out over my self preservation instinct.

Sighing, I stood up and began to march towards my blue haired friend with all the finality of a man on death row. As I did so, I tried to ignore the students that turned towards me at my sudden movement, diverting their attention from the ongoing drama. I was going to have nightmares about this, I just knew it. Grumbling the entire way, and feeling my face heating up with each step, I finally managed to place myself next to Neptune. As shy as I was, I was still easily one of the tallest people in school. Broad shouldered and easily six feet tall at my full height, I made for an imposing figure to anyone in my age group. Or I would if I wasn't rail thin from a lack of exercise and constantly slouching to avoid being noticed.

Now I put the entirety of that presence behind my next movement, dropping one hand on Neptune's shoulder and pulling him slightly away from his ongoing argument with an apologetic smile towards Victoria who had noticed me coming before Neptune as a result of facing in the direction I was approaching from.

"Wh- Dude! Not cool! Tell this bitch I'm not a fucking Merchant!" Neptune growled, turning to face me and pointing a finger accusingly at Victoria.

"Yeah Jaune, tell me alllll about it." Victoria said mockingly, and I winced at the vindictiveness in her stare when she turned it briefly on me to speak. I shuffled around uncomfortably for a second before turning my attention to Neptune who was glaring at me and trying to get me to let go of his shoulder.

"Nep man just let it go. She said no alright?" I whispered pulling him closer and not wanting to be heard by the dozens of cellphones now pointed at us.

"No! Jaune she thinks she's too good for me, but I bet if you asked-" He started but stopped when he caught the panicked look in my eyes.

I had assumed, at the time, that he had stopped because he had noticed my obvious distress over the situation. I had _apparently_ assumed wrong, because he got this gleam in his eye like he always did when he got a 'fool proof' plan that landed us both in detention.

"Look I'm sorry about this okay? I was just trying to help my buddy out. He was too shy to ask Amy here himself so I thought I'd break the ice." Neptune said confidently, whipping around and plastering a completely unperturbed look on his face as though the last five to ten minutes had never happened.

I must have stared at the back of his head for an eternity in confused shock before I actually felt myself return to reality so I could respond.

"What?!" I squawked, yanking hard on Neptune's shoulder to turn him back towards me. Victoria looked amused by the byplay, but Amy suddenly looked sick.

"Dude come on, no need to be shy about it. Asking won't hurt." He said genially, and I swear looking him in the eye I could see the _exact moment_ our friendship took a back seat to his social ladder climbing bullshit. Fury built up in me, a fury like I had never really felt before. How dare he? How dare he drag me into a situation out of my _worst nightmares_ and then try to _use me_ to get out of it? Before I could even stop to think about it I had already released my grip on the shorter boy and stepped away from him, my face going carefully neutral so as to avoid broadcasting the anger I was feeling at the moment.

"You know what Neptune? I tried to help, and you just went and sold me up the river. Just. Like. A Merchant." I ground out, hammering my big stupid arms on the one button I knew would _really_ piss him off. I regretted it immediately of course. I'd known Neptune long enough to know that he was militantly opposed to drugs and the Merchants in particular. Partly because everyone with any sense was, but also because pretty much everyone who knew him automatically assumed he was with them because of his parents.

There was barely a second of processing time between when I spoke and when he moved, but from my point of view it felt like forever. I wanted to take it back. I wanted to apologize and just leave this god damn cafeteria, full of people with god damn cellphones, who were probably streaming this entire thing _right god damn now_. But I couldn't, because by the time I had managed to open my mouth to do _any_ of those things, Neptune had plowed into me, an inarticulate shout of rage sprouting from his throat as he punched me once, square in the jaw and snapping my head to one side.

It hurt like hell, and it sent me sprawling backwards into another table, my eyesight blurry, and dancing lights popping in and out of existence just at the corners of my vision. Then, before I could get my bearings, I felt myself jerk upwards as Neptune grabbed me again, holding me down against the table and punching me solidly in the face three more times, each blow reducing me to a quivering mess that could barely determine which way was up, let alone which colored blob was presently punching me in the face.

There was however, a single moment of clarity. A brief moment of lucidity that allowed me to - however faintly, detect a streak of blonde as it hurtled towards us.

I don't know what I was thinking. Neptune obviously wasn't on my side right now, and anyone or any _thing_ that chose to stop him from bludgeoning me to death certainly wouldn't be acting counter to my current needs. But even still, the tiny part of my brain that hadn't caught up with my situation only really recognized two things.

One. Neptune _was_ my friend, even if only in the past tense now. And two?

Something was going to hurt him.

Pushing myself up using the last of my strength, I leveraged my superior size to shoulder Neptune backwards, sending him sprawling onto his ass - and leaving the yellow blur that had been streaking towards him free to slam into _me_ like a freight train.

I thought I knew pain. I had just been punched in the face, repeatedly and viciously, until I was partially blind. Breathing was hard and my jaw was stuck at an angle that was about as conducive for producing speech as having a knife jammed through my tongue. But this? This was like getting cleaved in two by a blunt object. I would have assumed that unconsciousness would claim me much sooner given how much pain I was in, but for god only knows what reason I had - in the split second of impact - been able to physically count my ribs as they curved inward, stabbing _through _rest of me.

Then the suffering became so diffuse and widespread that keeping track of it became impossible, and I blacked out.


	2. Shine (2)

Hospitals suck.

You would think that a building best known for containing Panacea, the greatest healer _ever_, would have more of a budget to devote to patient comfort and all that.

Apparently you would be wrong.

I'd woken up a little while ago wearing nothing but a hospital gown and staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. A quick glance to either side of me showed me that unlike those fancy private rooms you see in all the soaps, I was in one long room with several areas blocked off by heavy curtains to give the illusion of privacy. Something I could easily gauge just based on how far the ceiling seemed to stretch relative to the size of the tiny space I apparently occupied.

The tiny cubicle shaped space that had been set aside for me contained a narrow bed, and a tiny chair with all my clothes and effects on it.

Somewhere just beyond my sight I could hear dozens of other people in varying stages of misery and discomfort, moaning, and snoring, and whining for a nurse to bring them water. An exceptionally loud clock was ticking away from somewhere to my right, probably from right above the doorway to the room. I wanted to comment about the lack of an angel to meet me at the gates or something but I strongly suspected that if I was dead my torturer was probably just running late. That was the kind of luck I tended to have to put up with. Still, since I didn't _feel_ dead, I figured taking stock of things might not be a bad idea.

That thought in mind, I gingerly lifted the hospital gown I was in, and began to test my ribs for pain or damage of some kind with a knuckle, pressing lightly against each one. To my great surprise, instead of finding myself feeling stitches or the full remainder of the bone shattering pain I was sure Victoria had put me in, I found nothing so much as a small bruise across my front. Heck, it barely even hurt provided I didn't move around too much.

But... that didn't make sense. I _knew _what I felt back there. Victoria definitely hit me hard enough to turn my skeleton into an exoskeleton. Leaning forward and ignoring the spark of pain that traveled up my chest at the movement, I stretched a hand out for my clothes, lifting the white hoodie I always wore into the air for inspection.

I noticed right off that the thing had been washed. And not like 'once through the machine' washed. Whoever had laid hands on the thing had been a professional. There were Armani suits in the city that probably scored worse treatment than this. And again, I couldn't figure out _why. _

Looking around and frowning, I realized that I had no idea what time it was. The sterile white walls and dim lighting made it impossible to judge how dark it might have been outside, and my cellphone didn't appear to be anywhere in sight. If I was a more naturally paranoid person I might even assume that I was being intentionally prevented from contacting anyone. Which was a thought I found myself musing over just a tad longer than I probably should have.

And then a sharp cough echoed through the room and I dropped my sweater in shock, looking past it to find Amy - no, _Panacea _standing at the foot of my bed. She wasn't as outright gorgeous as her sister, but Amy was still pretty in a girl next door kind of way. Her Panacea outfit was really just a large shawl that hung over her entire body and obscured her figure, leaving nothing but her face visible, but years of Gym class with her told me that she was still probably in better shape than me under it all. Her tangled brown hair was largely tucked away in her hood, leaving only a few errant strands sticking out of it, and her eyes were lined with crows feet, showcasing the perpetualy tired look she always seemed to sport at school. It made sense I guessed. Panacea didn't have a Brute rating as far as PHO could tell, but she still managed to go to school full time while simultaneously spending enough time at the hospital that she was pretty much a part of the institution. _Anyone_ would be tired with that kind of work ethic.

That tiredness probably also explained why she basically didn't talk to anyone that Victoria didn't force her to.

Nooooot that I was watching for that or anything. When you have nearly no friends lunch hour tends to devolve into an exercise in people watching is all.

All in all, Amy Dallon was considered the more 'boring' looking of the sisters Dallon. It was for this reason that people typically tried to use her as a gateway to her sister Victoria. The fact that those people typically did that by asking her out never seemed to register as a disingenuous to them. Which was a shame, because to all accounts Amy was the type of ultra dedicated good guy who spent more time helping out at the Hospital for free than I spent in school.

"H-hi Amy. How's tricks?" I said weakly, and she narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously before releasing a bone weary sigh. Her facial expression flattened out into a cool professional expression that hid whatever it was she had just been thinking, and she turned a critical eye on me.

"Fine. How are you feeling?" She said carefully, her gaze searching my face for something.

"A little sore?" I offered, not thinking too deeply about the question. I mean, Panacea was a 'Super' Doctor, but she was still legally a medical professional. Asking me how I felt wasn't really that out of left field. Still the fact that she asked at all tickled something at the back of my mind.

"Good. I made sure you didn't have any permanent damage or anything, but you might still be a bit unsteady on your feet." She explained, gesturing towards my head.

"No biggy. I don't think Vicky's shoulder caught me anywhere above my neck anyway." I said with a shrug. Panacea winced briefly but forged onward as if I hadn't spoken, her eyebrows pulling together in a slight expression of consternation.

"Neptune might not have punched you in the head directly, but strikes to the jaw tend to bounce the brain around a bit. I don't do brain's so I could really only fix your jaw. Your body didn't really have enough fat reserves for me to deal with the bruising on your ribs so I just dulled the pain a bit there." She said, her voice wavering slightly as the topic of my ribs finally came up.

"Does it take that much to fix broken bones? I guess my organs weren't as ripped up as they felt." I asked curiously. I couldn't really be considered a cape geek - I didn't spend that much time on the topic honestly - but when speaking one on one with someone who has _actual super powers_ the topic was definitely tempting. I was just musing on whether or not getting to into the topic would be intrusive when I noticed that something I had just said had caused Panacea to freeze in place. Her expression was the same as it always had been but her complexion had paled appreciably, and I had to really focus on her to notice the slight movement caused by her breathing.

"...Uh... Amy?" I tried, waving one hand in front of her to see if that would grab her attention. I hoped she wasn't having a stroke or something. It would seriously be my luck that the greatest healer in the country stroked out and died at my bedside.

"I- it's nothing!" She replied quickly, jolting slightly away from me.

"Right... Um. Look do you need to lie down? Take some medication? You can't heal yourself right?" I questioned, noting that the longer I looked at her the worse she started to look. I tried to remember that crappy first aid class I'd been forced to go through a year or two ago at school for an elective. Was it pale and sweating for a diabetic attack, or flushed and sweating?

"I'm fine!" She blurted, staring at me like a deer at the oncoming lights of an eighteen wheeler.

"Yeah I get that sometimes people having strokes don't actually notice and all but-" I tried again, but stopped when Amy practically leapt at me, pushing me back down onto the bed.

"Stop! I'm seriously fine okay? Look it's just been a long day and uh... you said you wanted to go out on a date right?" She blurted out. The pressure she was putting on my chest to hold me down was enough to seriously hurt, and the way her eyes darted back and forth like she was afraid of something put me seriously on edge.

Which was a shame, because the second my stress levels started to go up was the second the faint sound of my entire torso being nearly pulped surfaced in my memory.

"Wuh? No that was just something Nep made up because he's an idiot! Amy seriously, what happened? I feel like I should be in a morgue, not sitting pretty with a bruise and a draft between my legs!" I blurted out, the slight humor in the statement almost completely overshadowed by the rising hysteria I started to feel the minute I actually began to verbalize my thoughts and worries.

"Vicky didn't hit you nearly that hard!" Panacea said frantically, her shoulders tensing slightly, causing her body weight to fall more fully on top of me and eliciting a grunt of pain from me.

"No seriously, Amy, I _felt _my ribs snap!" I said waving my arms around for emphasis. The motion caused the girl before me to flinch and lean away, settling back into her seat beside the bed. Honestly none of this made sense to me. Why had Vicky been going that fast in the first place? Neptune was facing _away _from her, which meant if she'd hit him he could have been crippled for _life. _

"Jaune. Look at me." Amy said, her face going stony and her voice frigid and perhaps just a bit tired. Hearing the severity in her tone I immediately straightened my back and squared my shoulders. It was a learned reaction more than anything else. My Mom was a busy woman, and she didn't like wasting time repeating herself, so I was sort of accustomed to shutting up and listening carefully.

"Nothing happened okay?" She repeated, glaring at me like she was trying to set me on fire.

I ignored the statement. There was something niggling at the back of my mind again, an idea that refused to be ignored. Victoria Dallon had another moniker besides her chosen one of 'Glory Girl'. The PHO Boards tended to refer to her as 'Collateral Damage Barbie'. It wasn't flattering, but with a power set like Glory Girls it wasn't unexpected either. She had rammed through so many walls, vehicles, and people, in the pursuit of criminals that had pissed her off, that most of the boards were amazed she had never killed or permanently crippled anyone.

Only, when I thought about it, someone who could handily make all that go away was sitting right in front of me.

I opened my mouth to say as much, already feeling my bile rising at the temerity of this woman to think she could just _tell me _nothing had happened, then stopped.

Looking closer at her, Panacea didn't just look angry - she looked _desperate. _Amy always looked tired, but right now her face was so lined with tension that she could easily be mistaken for a woman _twice _her age.

"Look I know what you're doing okay?" I said carefully, my natural Inclination to not make a nuisance of myself taking over and burying my anger. I glanced to either side of me at the cloth thin walls that separated us from whoever else was in the room, and realized that I had been put here more to further the deception than anything else. If I just had some bruised ribs, there was no need for me to be in a private room to recover. A bed and some painkillers would do me just fine.

The only problem was, if I decided to just speak my piece there was a very real chance that someone else would hear it. The idea of tearing down Glory Girls sterling reputation certainly still sat in a corner of my thoughts, but well... Glory Girl was _important._ She _mattered_. She went out every day and used her powers to curb the gangs, to stomp out as much crime as she could. Was she perfect? God no, she was a teenage girl. But she was certainly more important than _me_. I hadn't even figured out what I wanted to do after high school. My mom had told me I would be going to college, but she hadn't said where or for what which left me feeling like the plan was simply to ship me to Boston and pay for my residence.

"Just... I don't know, call it a favor owed and lets skip the date thing okay?" I finally said, pushing down the anger I was feeling and looking at things objectively for a second. It wasn't like anyone would believe me anyway. No one was going to take my word over Glory Girls, and it wasn't like there was any proof of...

"Wait. What about the cellphones? Wasn't everyone recording that?" I blurted, belatedly realizing my hospital gown was riding up and hurriedly pulling it back down to hide my shame. As if expecting me to ask such a question, Panacea reached into her robe and withdrew a cellphone, turning towards me with it already set to play a video. Her grip on the phone was iron clad, so tight that I was genuinely worried she was going to break the thing. But I had bigger worries at the moment than if she broke her own device.

Quickly tapping the play button, I watched as the entire encounter in the cafeteria played out. Right up until the point when I pushed Neptune off of me. That was when things took a weird turn. Glory Girl definitely slammed into me, and if I tried _very_ hard I could just about imagine the point when most of my ribs had shattered, but visually there was no indication of that fact.

Mostly because rather than let me sail into the nearest wall or group of spectators, Glory Girl had paused ever so briefly while facing away from the camera, and then taken hold of me and slung me over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I watched numbly as things proceeded, with a number of other students deciding - well after the fact - to intervene and hold Neptune down, while Victoria called for Amy to have me looked at.

The camera was mostly focused on Victoria, and if I was being honest whatever student was holding it seemed less interested in the goings on and much more interested in her body in particular, but I could still see Neptune in the corner of the video, watching everything moving around him with a slowly growing horror to him. The video only ended when he turned enough to look directly into the camera, and began shaking.

My gaze flicked downward, to the title of the video. 'Merchant versus Nazi feat GG'.

What the hell? I was a big blonde guy so they just automatically assumed I was with the Empire? Who the hell would believe this crap? I wanted to believe that my schoolmates knew better than to attribute that kind of thing to me, but another quick look towards the rapidly growing view count on the video quickly put paid to that belief.

"Shit. Shit shit shit!" I cursed, pushing the phone and the damning video out of the way so I could stop and think for a second.

"I'm not a nazi! Shit, if anyone who works with my Mom see's this, she'll be ruined!" I hissed, dropping my face into my hands. I had to get out of here. I needed to call my Mom, let her know about all of this so she could get ahead of it. I needed-

"You're _not_ Empire? I didn't want to assume but-" Panacea asked suddenly, dragging me from my momentary despair.

"Why the _hell _would I be a Nazi? Because I'm white and blonde? Is Victoria a Nazi?" I bit out, temporarily gratified by the way Panacea flinched at my words.

"Sorry. It's just... Neptune is the only guy at Arcadia who seemingly flaunts a gang affiliation, and you were always with him so..." She explained meekly, still somewhat panicked looking but growing calmer by the second.

"I...what? For one thing, 'blue hair' is not an accurate indication of gang affiliation, and for another when have either of us _actually done anything?_" I snarled, feeling the fight drain out of me just as fast as it had come. Amy looked like she wanted to say something in response to that, but I cut her off by speaking first.

"Look just... leave me alone. I need my cellphone. I won't tell anyone about your sister maiming me." I ground out bitterly.

Panacea looked at me oddly for a second then, like I was a new brand of creature she wasn't sure how to deal with. The frigid severity she held previously was gone, now mostly replaced by confusion.

Then she nodded slowly, and pulled my phone out of another fold in her robe. I had no idea how she hid it there let alone kept it from falling out every time she bent forward or moved too fast. Maybe the thing was tinkertech.

Quickly swiping the phone from her I checked my messages. There were nearly twenty from Neptune, but I didn't bother reading them. Whatever else happened, Neptune wasn't my friend anymore. I had no intention of getting revenge or going after him - I didn't really think he deserved it - but when it came down to it, I couldn't trust the guy to have my back - and that meant I couldn't trust him at all. That kind of all or nothing take on relationships was probably one of the reasons I had so few friends. You could assume that said a lot about me as a person, but really, I thought it said a lot more about people in general that 'loyalty' being my only real criteria for friendship had left me alone most days.

There was only _one _message from my Mom.

'The school called, come home when you're discharged.'

Just that. No worries for my well being, no questions about what happened. Not even a missed phone call from her trying to get in contact with me. Just that one message.

Yeah that was Mom alright. Probably busy at her desk like she always was.

"She's sorry you know." Panacea said, reminding me that she was still there.

Instead of answering her statement directly, I shifted, sliding my feet off the hospital bed and feeling the cool tile floor as I stood.

"I have to get dressed." I said, looking towards the chair with my stuff on it. Panacea silently stepped outside the cubicle and slid the curtain shut to block her view of it's interior before continuing.

"She really didn't mean to get you. She was just trying to help." Panacea tried again, weakly.

I ignored her and got dressed, then picked up my school bag. Throwing that over my shoulder without bothering to check the contents, I walked through the curtain and into the narrow hall just outside it leading to the door.

"Thanks. I'll remember that." I said, affecting a smile that didn't really reach my eyes.

I could feel Panacea's gaze on my back as I ambled out the door, no doubt worried about any attempt I might make to ruin her sisters reputation.

I hoped she believed me when I said it was fine because...

_'If she's so sorry - why isn't she here?' _I thought caustically.

For my part, I wasn't so sure.


	3. Shine (3)

The walk home was about as uneventful as it gets in Brockton Bay.

Since it was already starting to get dark by the time I left, my walk was accompanied by the sweet symphony of gunshots and sirens as the local gangs became active. In any other city in the world that would scare me. Here that was just life.

Thankfully, Mom, much like _most _of the still employed people living in the bay area, worked at Medhall. As a result, we also _lived_ fairly close to that area.

Medhall, along with the Hospital, Arcadia High, and a few other places in the city were considered to be no go zones for most of the local capes. Since I lived in one of those places and commuted to another, my walk home was _usually _pretty safe. I say usually because the Archer's Bridge Merchant's weren't best known for sane behavior. Once or twice a year you heard about something bad happening in the area because of them, but that was about it. Personally, I was pretty sure that the Merchants were smart enough not to provoke a confrontation by being to ballsy about it. Their known capes weren't exactly heavy hitters.

Between the leisurely speed I was walking at and the relative distance of the Hospital from my neighborhood, I made it home by about eight thirty and did a quick check of the entryway to determine if my Mom was home. Dad had left us ages ago, so it was just the two of us here now. That was probably the reason why even now after all these years the place still looked like we had just moved in. Mom wasn't very material, and I was way too conscious of how hard she worked to ask her to spend money on furniture just to make the place look more lived in, so there were obvious gaps and empty spaces all over the place.

The only place that really gave the illusion of homeliness was the entryway - and even that was mostly just because Mom was such a stickler for appearances, and therefore had more shoes than was really reasonable.

Even if half of them were for dancing with Dad and hadn't seen the light of day in years.

Sure enough the wedges Mom wore to work were laying haphazardly against a wall just past the doorway, where they would remain until my she put them on again tomorrow - assuming she didn't decide to wear something more comfortable or appropriate to the circumstances anyway.

"Mom! I'm home!" I called out, hanging my bag in the closet and bending down to untie my shoes.

No answer came but really, I hadn't expected one.

Grunting, I wandered further into the house, glancing at the kitchen and trying to decide if I wanted to make myself something to eat. I could hear the soft clacking of a keyboard upstairs as I thought, reminding me that even though she hadn't answered my call she was still definitely awake.

Mom... probably hadn't eaten yet. She tended to forget to do it if I wasn't home to remind her. Assuming we had actual food anyway. Odds were good the fridge would be empty and I would just have to use her card to order pizza again.

I didn't _hate _pizza mind you. I was a teenager, so that was a given. But eating it for every meal and using leftovers for breakfast got old after a while.

Sighing, I strode into the kitchen and checked the fridge to find it unsurprisingly empty. Rolling my eyes at this I headed upstairs to my Moms little office. She and Dad used to have separate bedrooms - something about their differing work hours I think - and it had taken all of a week for her to finish dragging a desk and a filing cabinet in here after he left. I had mixed feelings on the subject, but I knew better than to argue with my Mother on the topic. Very few things would get her to ignore me faster than trying to talk about Dad.

Hence, I was already considering a solid push for Chinese tonight when I rounded the corner and looked in on my mother.

Her office was sparse. Basically just the desk, a computer, and a filing cabinet that - conveniently - blocked the window. She sat at the desk with the lights off and nothing but the glow of the computer screen illuminating the room, her glasses halfway down her nose in a careless fashion I was sure she wouldn't notice until they literally fell off. It was probably hell on her eyes, but I knew from experience that I would lose the argument if I tried to turn the light on and remedy the problem. Mom liked things the way she liked things. Logic wasn't a part of the equation.

"Hey Mom." I said as I stepped into the room.

"Mm. Are you okay?" She asked, her tone nothing if not distracted sounding. She didn't even bother to look up at me when she spoke - just continued right on typing whatever it was she did for Medhall. Some variety of accounting work I think.

"...Yeah. Uh, they got me to the hospital and Panacea looked at me." I said, getting only a hum of acknowledgement in response.

"There's a video of it happening!" I blurted, stepping closer to the desk.

"I'll look at it later." My mother said, swatting my hand away from the computer when I tried to turn it to open the video for her.

"The video says I'm with the Empire. Cus I'm blonde and all - will you get in trouble for that or...?" I tried again. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. I just wanted her to look at me for _one second. _Didn't she care? I had nearly died today. My reputation was _shot. _I didn't even _have _a reputation before today. _Now _I was the Nazi that Glory Girl had slammed at Arcadia. It didn't matter how stupid it was, or that Arcadia didn't have a notable gang presence. It didn't matter who, or how many people I explained myself too. That wasn't how the rumor mill worked, and it _definitely_ wasn't how _teenagers_ worked. No matter what, I knew for a fact that when I went to school tomorrow, it might as well be with a swastika painted on my forehead.

Mom's fingers paused for a second as I spoke, and she shook her head before returning to her work.

"Just ignore it sweetheart. It'll go away eventually." She said mumbled, idly warding me away with a gesture. I knew she was doing it because whatever she was doing was confidential. I really did. I understood implicitly that she was just doing her job and sticking to all the various agreements she inevitably had to sign in the course of any given task. I _knew_ that she wasn't talking about _me_ when she said that.

But even still, I flinched at the words, stepping away from the desk.

"There's no food. Chinese?" I asked rapidly changing subjects and fighting down the tears that were threatening to well up. This was pathetic. I could sit through getting more or less eviscerated by Glory Girl without shedding a single tear. I had been punched in the face enough that I was pretty sure Panacea had been implying I had brain damage. And through all of that, I hadn't shed a single tear.

But poor baby Jauneys Mom ignores him and he goes to pieces.

"...Jaune?" My mother said in response to my question, and I felt my heart lift slightly as hope filled my world.

"Yeah?" I asked anxiously.

"I feel like Italian tonight." She said, then returned to her work.

I stared at her, dumbly. I couldn't tell if she was ignoring me on purpose or just genuinely didn't notice. She had always been a little focused on work, but since Dad left she just... worked. Constantly. It was so frustrating I wanted to scream.

But if I did _that_, then she would just yell at me for disturbing her. And wouldn't that just be the kicker. So instead I just nodded and walked off to get her purse. She couldn't see me do it of course. But she would at least be able to hear me walking away.

Unconsciously, and almost against my will, I felt my feet carry me onward. Not to the phone so I could order our dinner. Not to my room so I could get changed. But to the basement. It was a sparsely decorated room. When we had moved here it had basically been two rooms separated by a half wall with bare concrete floors and some wooden supports in it. Dad wouldn't have any of that though - he always said that basements are supposed to be man caves, something my Mother could only ever snort at when he brought it up.

He never got to finish all the changes he wanted to make.

For one thing, he had knocked out the wall separating the two rooms, making it into one large open space. Mom had been furious because he hadn't bothered to check if that wall was load bearing in anyway before doing so, but the house didn't collapse on us when he did it so, so I assume it wasn't. Score one for Dad I guess. There was a carpet now, a plain brown thing that now reminded me more of shit than the earth tone it was probably intended to provide. The far wall held an empty set of cabinets that were intended to eventually carry Dad's entertainment system - taken with him when he left the city.

I ignored all of that though, as I found myself inexorably drawn towards the opposite wall. The one that held all of Dad's sports equipment. It wasn't in any kind of racking though. Just a series of labeled boxes that I had to assume were eventually going to be replaced by a display of some kind. I wouldn't know, Dad had never explained his plans fully to me.

More gently than I probably needed to, I went through each box, withdrawing bits of gear for myself. A football helmet, a cup, hockey mitts, knee and shin guards. About half of this stuff was my Dads. The older stuff he didn't see fit to take with him when he left us. The other half was junk I had managed to scrounge the cash together for. I laid it all out together on the ground in front of me, putting each piece of gear down on an imaginary outline of a person. It was... well it was hideous honestly. All the pieces were different colors, like a clown had vomited on them, and a few pieces had some obvious damage to them where I hadn't been able to repair the discount bin stuff I'd been purchasing.

But it was mine now, and _that_ was what mattered. I eyed the empty space where the torso was. I had originally intended to scrimp some more cash together to get a cheap bullet proof vest to go there, maybe underneath a large jersey so it wasn't as noticeable. But a vest like that wasn't cheap, and even though it wasn't all that suspicious to buy one here in Brockton Bay where the gangs more or less ruled the majority of the city, I just didn't want to wait anymore.

Deciding then and there that I didn't care anymore, I rapidly pulled on all the equipment I had, strapping most of it directly over my clothes. Without a mirror I already knew what I looked like. A new parahuman - someone going out for their first patrol probably. The PHO had tons of pictures of capes dressed exactly like me, capes who had just taken whatever was on hand to make their first costume or armor. It was called a 'starter costume' and it was usually something everyone on PHO - including myself - would laugh at. It was kind of a game to most of us, to try and find pictures of capes in starter gear and then to later match those capes to their more polished appearances, once they were established and had joined the PRT or the Gangs.

I was different from those capes in one specific way though. I never had, and likely never _would_ have, powers. I was 100%, human. Alot of people would argue that trying to be a cape with absolutely no powers was stupid. Possibly suicidal. But if I thought about it, the number of Capes in the city who could shrug off a bullet was pretty low. I mean, yeah Clockblocker could freeze anything he touched, but if a gang banger really wanted to I'm pretty sure they _could_ just shoot him. The same was true for a decent portion of the local Protectorate too. Triumph and Miss Militia spring immediately to mind as Heroes who are highly vulnerable to normal gunfire. All that being that case, I eventually started to assume that most of the local gangs actively chose _not_ to kill any Capes. And that meant that as long as everyone assumed _I _was a Cape I should be... sort of... safe... ish. Probably.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts I jogged back up the stairs, a task made slightly more difficult by all the extra stuff strapped to me. I hesitated at the front door for a second before jogging up yet another flight to the upper floor where my Mom was. I stepped fully into view in her doorway, expecting a reaction, but never got one. She didn't even look up.

Pushing my luck a bit, I crossed the room to the little rack she hung her purse on and paused again, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement. Still nothing. Finally, I withdrew some cash - I don't know how much, it was hard just to get her purse _open_ wearing these gloves - and stuffed it into my pocket.

"Italian right?" I asked, my voice echoing inside the ugly orange flecked football helmet I was wearing.

"Mmm." She grunted in acknowledgement.

"...love you Mom." I said, turning to walk out of the room.

Another grunt was her only response.

I allowed myself to feel a little depressed at that for a bit, but by the time my foot hit the landing on the main floor I was over it. This wasn't new to me. This was just life now, and if I wanted to be a cape (or at least, pass as one), then I had to get my head in the game. With a final deep breath I pushed the front door of my house open and stepped outside.

Ignoring the fact that I had to take my gloves off so I could lock the front door, I was feeling... not good per say, but at the very least _relaxed_. It was finally dark out, and the night air was cool and crisp. I could almost - _almost _\- forget all of the other shit going on in my life right now. There was just me, the night, and the first coked up Merchant I could find. Yeah I was perfectly aware that I had no powers, which was why the ABB and the E88 were off limits for me. I doubted I could take even a single adult male with his bare hands let alone someone with a knife or a gun. But the Merchants? Those guys were notoriously shitty criminals. Constantly high on their own supply as it were.

Plus, thinking of Neptune, I had a feeling I might have a little aggression I needed to work out.

Starting out slowly, I began to jog up the street towards the docks, picking up speed with every passing moment as I got more and more accustomed to the awkward collection of crap hanging off me. By the time I had made it up to a comfortable speed I was all fired up and ready to go. Fuck school. Fuck Neptune, Fuck Glory Girl, Fuck Panacea, Fuck Mom, and _Fuck _Dad with a knife.

Because tonight, I was a _Cape_.


	4. Shine (4)

Something like forty five minutes of jogging that eventually became walking later, I was beginning to think I hadn't thought this through.

I hadn't found a _single _bad guy to punch - er, apprehend. Seriously, where were all the crack heads? This was the _docks _for gods sake! Like half of every murder that happened in the city happened here!

The second I thought that my feet locked up. Holy shit, half of _everyone _who got reported dead in Brockton turned up on the docks. _I was part of 'everyone'. _What the hell was I even doing here?

"Maybe it's a good thing no ones here huh." I said aloud, my mind roving over my angry flight from home. Mom was probably hungry and wondering where the food was by now. If I turned around in time I could probably catch an Italian place before everything closed...

As if in direct contrast to my rapidly cooling thoughts, all hell broke loose around me, as a yellow blur blew past me and into the nearby alleyway.

"Watch it new guy!" A feminine voice yelled as it passed, the alley it had landed in exploding with the sound of a brawl in progress.

Rather faster than I thought was possible, my eyes quickly adjusted to the shadows of the alley, and the blur of yellow resolved itself into a muscular blonde girl with flowing golden hair that fell to her waist in an untamed and glorious mess. Her arms were sheathed in bright yellow gauntlets, and for the brief second I was staring at her they blared to life, sounding off like a firearm and sending her fists careening into the nearest person.

Usually I would have spent a few more seconds orienting and you know - trying to recognize who this person was - but I didn't have much more time to register what was going on than that. Mostly because the alley she had thrown herself into turned out to contain at least five other guys, who's dim outlines showed a variety of melee weapons between them.

Holy shit, an actual Cape! Fighting! Right there!

It was like the last five minutes of talking myself off the ledge had never happened. Without giving any thought to the matter I barrelled forward, using my superior size to shoulder check one of the guys into a wall with a jarring crunching sound that I hoped wasn't coming from me. Out of the corner my eye I could see the blonde glance towards me for a moment before turning back to her own opponent..s. Honestly if I stopped to think about it, I would probably realize she was facing off against four fully grown men all on her own and seemed to be coming out on top. But my heart was pounding, and my my thoughts were beginning to slip away like sand. All I could really think about was the body heat from the guy I had just tackled, and the sound of fighting coming from all around me.

The sudden violence caused a wave of nausea to flow over me, and I stumbled away from the man I had attacked - who despite my best efforts - remained conscious, and quite mad. He shook his head and brandished the steel pipe he had in one hand at me, making me step backwards in fear.

The amazonian blonde girl took that moment to slam into me from behind, her back impacting mine and making the air whoosh out of my lungs like a squished balloon. Then, as though I was merely a puppet hanging on strings, she kicked my closed fist up into the air, and spun around me, hooking her free hand in my arm and using the momentum to turn us both like two halves of a spinning top.

Blinding fast we spun, my outstretched fist cracking against the skull of a man who had been behind me, even as the blonde clocked the man against the wall so hard that he simply fell to the ground in a boneless heap.

I blinked, completely confused by what had just happened. Or I tried to anyway. Before I could really register what was going on I was being moved again, being flung around like a living weapon until finally there was only one man left. I realized belatedly that what I was looking at wasn't a Merchant - he was very explicitly wearing ABB colors. Which was worrying for a number of reasons.

The ABB - short for the Asian Bad Boyz - were a much better organized gang than the Merchants were. Where the Merchants were a group of loosely affiliated drug addicts working under a handful of Parahumans, largely so that they could earn enough money to buy more drugs, the ABB were more like the Yakuza. If you were asian and living anywhere near ABB territory - you were part of the 'family'. I could understand why of course. Kyushu didn't exist anymore, along with some fairly large swathes of Korea. The number of desperate asian immigrants here in the bay wasn't small, and the fact that the only other options were Nazi's and Crack addicts meant paying a protection fee to the ABB was leagues better than the alternative.

The problem that produced for me though, was that being as organized as it was, the ABB had much better access to guns than your average Merchant. A fact that was demonstrated when the last ganger in front of us whipped one out and pointed it straight at my head.

"Fuck." The blonde murmured under her breath as the glint of gunmetal flashed out of the mans waistband and into his hands. Yeah, 'Fuck' was right. I didn't know what blondies powers were, but I really doubted she was a Brute any more than I was.

This is the part in all the comics where the bad guy tells you to stop or monologues at you or something. Gives the good guys a chance to respond or dodge or come up with a crafty plan. To bad this was real life, and this random thug didn't look like he'd watched anything educational in his entire existence. He went from pointing at me to pulling the trigger so fast that I literally saw my life flash before my eyes.

It was as if I was watching everything in slow motion. Every minute twitch in the mans body screaming at me to move even though there was no _way _I would be able to dodge in time. I could feel a curious pressure building in the back of my head as I desperately prayed for something, _anything_, to happen that would get me out of this.

Then there was a thunder crack and I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable pain of death as the bullet pulped my grey matter.

I waited for one second, then another, then slowly opened my eyes, blinking when the sight in front of me resolved itself Into the form of my would be murderer, crumpled against a wall of the alley like a giant had just mule kicked him into it.

"Wuh?" I asked in obvious confusion.

"Rubes! Come on I had that!" The blonde complained into the night sky, and for a second I thought she must be crazy, until a tiny slip of a girl wearing the frilliest black and red dress I had ever seen slid down the nearest alley wall.

"Ya-Veteran! Names! Strangers! And I don't care how your power works - _you can't block bullets!_" The younger girl chided in a huff as she approached us.

I wanted to comment on the practicality of a skirt that poofy in combat but two things made me shut my mouth. One, I was wearing hockey gloves and lacrosse gear. Fashion was probably not my area of expertise. And two - when she had fallen to the ground in the alley, she had slowed her descent by digging the _biggest damn scythe I had ever seen _into the wall, and just sort of riding it down as it sliced open two stories of brickwork like it was butter.

"Come _on, _I bet I could do it! Uber could probably do it and I'm _way _better than that guy!" Blondie whined, waving her hands in the air to illustrate her exasperation.

"Uber is smart enough to wear Tinkertech protection! _Decolletage isn't armor!_" The small one said, pointing menacingly at blondies chest. Unconsciously, my gaze followed her finger to where she was pointing and I felt my hormones do a backflip as it dawned on me that the tight yellow shirt the girl was wearing really didn't do anything but push her cleavage into view.

The second I looked I snapped my eyes away, pointing them somewhere over my saviors head. Apparently having noticed my male gaze, she shot me a dirty grin and wiggled her eyebrows at me as my eyes slid past her face. I noted idly that she looked like she was of vaguely Asian descent. But definitely not fully Asian. Her features and hair were just a bit too Caucasian for that.

"Uh. Hi?" I said, taking this as my entry into the conversation, however uncomfortable it made me.

"Yo, new guy. Nice moves out there!" Veteran said, leaning over so her cleavage was more visible and slapping me on the shoulder so hard I instinctively lowered myself against the sting - right back into line of sight with -

Nope. I shot back up, ignoring the grip of her hand on my shoulder as it tightened on me.

"I uh, you did all the work. I just helped." I said weakly.

"Yeah but I've always wanted to try that whole Jackie Chan beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker thing, I figure you gotta have at least a low Brute rating so who else was I gonna try it with?" She laughed, and I froze.

Why the hell did she think I had a Brute rating? The answer of course, when I thought about it, was obvious - only an idiot would go into melee without a related power. And since I hadn't shot fire from my hands, shown any display of skill, or done anything at all but bludgeon people, the simplest assumption was Brute.

Because what kind of idiot tries to be a Cape with no powers at all?

"Vet! Rude! You can't just talk about his powers!" The younger girl, 'Rubes' I guessed, said.

"Fiiiine." Veteran said like a child being scolded, her smile still writ large on her face.

Apparently having had enough of her partner, Rubes turned to me, swishing that big ass scythe of hers (how the hell did she carry it?) and flicking a switch somewhere that caused it to fold down to a size you could probably fit into a backpack. That was... that was horrifying. I tried to imagine someone pulling out a tree sized tinkertech weapon in the middle of school and shuddered.

"Soooo." Rubes said, eyeing me up and down while bouncing back and forth like a kid on a sugar high.

"I'm Ru-Hood! Red Riding Hood! But you can just call me Hood!" She blurted awkwardly.

"Veteran." The other girl said with a nod.

They both paused staring at me expectantly. What were they- oh. Right. Introductions. The problem was, I didn't have a Cape name. At this point I could tell myself that was because I hadn't thought of one yet, but the truth was, I just hadn't thought I'd need one. I mean... I didn't actually _have_ powers. Even worse, despite my mind knowing all of that my mouth apparently had already moved on without me.

"Jaune Arc. Short. Sweet. Rolls off the tongue." I said, miming a suave pointing stance at them before all three of us froze.

Did I... did I just straight up out myself just now? _What the fuck is wrong with me?_

"Jesus dude what the fuck is _wrong _with you!?" Veteran said, jerking away from me like I had just offered to set her on fire.

"Uh, maybe he's like New Wave? You are right?" Hood said nervously, looking back and forth between us like she didn't fully grasp what was going on.

"No, I'm just... so... so... stupid. I don't have a name yet and I just...fuuuuuuck." I groaned, blurting out my thoughts as they crossed my mind.

"Look I'm gonna call you New Guy until you get your shit together and _we_-" Veteran said pointedly waving a finger between herself and hood.

"- are going to forget everything you just said." She finished, just as Hood plunged one fist into her open palm like she'd just had a eureka moment and blurted;

"Your from that video! Aren't you a Nazi?!"

She didn't even sound mad about it. Just sort of excited that she'd recognized me, even if that recognition _did _come with the tacit belief that I was in the E88.

"No! Being blonde and white doesn't make me a Nazi!" I yelled back.

"Oook. Hood. No more personal questions. New Guy. We're headed to bust some more heads. Wanna come with?" Veteran said, plunging between us with a palm upturned to push us apart.

I should say no. I mean, I had nearly died once tonight and it _sucked. _I was pretty sure I had cracked or at least _bruised _my knuckles in that last brawl and I hadn't even really done anything.

But another part of me, a part I usually tried to ignore was just... _excited. _Ecstatic even. I was out on the town with a few other capes and we were going to fight crime, and it was going to be _awesome. _

Still though... Mom was probably hungry...

"Um. J-New Guy, I'd really appreciate it. I did my best but uh, Ya-Veteran doesn't have a Brute rating. And I can't really fight uh, non lethally. So if you could look out for her..." Hood said, her eyes turning huge and pleading.

She couldn't have chosen more convincing words if she tried. She was so innocent looking, and I wanted to help so bad, wanted to be _important, _and, and well... _needed. _

Yeah she might as well have mastered me. Fuck. I was going to die and I wasn't even that _worried _about it. Shit.

"I'm in." I said, holding a fist out awkwardly.

"Yay!" Hood said, doing a little hop that did... interesting things to the hem of her skirt.

Veteran rolled her eyes but shot me a mild warning look before bumping my fist with her own. Very hard.

Yeah I... I might be screwed.


	5. Shine (5)

I don't know if Veteran and Hood were just _way _better at it than I was, but once I joined up with them, we couldn't go a block before running into another group of gangsters. What struck me as particularly weird about that, was the fact that every single one of those groups was part of the ABB.

The docks were traditionally a sort of no man zone that the Merchants used to push their product. No one wanted to control the area because no one who lived in the dock area had any money anyway. Leviathan had pretty much single handedly killed any and all nautical industries. Not just here either, but world wide. Naturally, I had _assumed _I wouldn't encounter any competent fighters out here. And yet here we were, with Veteran tearing a path straight through more ABB goons than I was likely to see in a year just roaming the streets.

I helped of course. Veteran used me basically the same way she had during our first fight - namely, as a mobile obstacle and occasionally weapon. I feel like I should probably have taken offense to that, but if it helped cover up the fact that I had _no _idea what I was doing then I guess it couldn't be _that_ bad. Still, by the end of our third group of Thugs, I was feeling more like a human battering ram than an actual Cape. And I hurt. Like, everywhere. I don't know if it was because of my perceived Brute rating, or if it was just because I never seemed to complain about any of my injuries, but Veteran threw me around with so much force I'm pretty sure I was going to need to see a Doctor some time tomorrow.

Hood also proved to be something of a life saver. Despite how obviously deadly her scythe thing was, she never directly joined any of the fighting. Instead, she would stay to the rooftops, making precision shots against any thug that looked like they might have something more lethal than a metal pipe on hand. If I wasn't sure she was a Tinker by now, the fact that her Scythe was also somehow a Sniper Rifle that could fire nonlethal heavy ammunition clued me into that fact pretty fast. Those rounds of hers seemed to distribute the force of their strikes evenly across the entire body, resulting in more of a heavy shove than a gunshot wound. Even that description didn't really do it justice. Some of the guys she shot at flattened on one side as though they had run flat out into a brick wall. It would be comical if it wasn't so horrifying to hear their bones crunching. It was better than killing them obviously, but probably not from the thugs point of view.

A minute part of my mind wanted to try and spare a thought for her specialty, even as I was being hurled back and forth. At first I thought it was nonlethal weapons - because who makes a bullet that DOESNT kill it's target? But that didn't really line up with the scythe being so... scythey. Plus, she had commented a few times that the non lethal ammo was a pain to make, and frequently muttered about only having so much of it while we were moving around. It could be 'Weapons' maybe, but honestly if that was the case she needed to get herself to the protectorate asap. The gangs _already_ had a tendency to snap up any Tinkers they could get their hands on, and even a two bit hack like Squeeler was considered dangerous as all hell - and _her _specialty was pretty much just 'cars'. I couldn't even fathom the kind of blood bath that would spawn from a weapons tinker being in town.

Armsmaster was the resident master tinker and his specialty was miniaturization or something equally lame sounding.

I also kind of wondered where she'd gotten the materials for the damn thing and why I'd never heard of her on the PHO boards before (Tinkers were big news no matter where you lived), but I guessed that this was probably her first night out too - even if she and Veteran _were_ drastically more competent than I was at it.

Probably because they actually had powers, while I was just pretending.

Not that I could figure out what the hell Veteran's powers were. I was heavily leaning towards some kind of combat thinker - she was hell on wheels once she started fighting, and seemed to have an infinite well of composure and technique to handle any situation.

Well, _almost _any situation. One guy had nicked her hair with a knife and he... _might _be dead? Probably not, but you could only get punched in the head so many times, even if those punches had nothing additional enhancing them than the rage of a teenage girl.

Still, over the course of a few hours, with occasional stops to rest in between, we found ourselves worn out and bloody. Yeah we were winning every fight but we were getting progressively slower with each one. Veteran had a few scratches and minor wounds on her, I was just one contiguous bruise, and Hood seemed like she might collapse if she had to scale one more building.

"H-hey. I think I'm good for now." I wheezed from my position, bent over with my hands on my knees for support.

"You sure? I'm thinking we can keep going." Veteran said, obviously nonplussed by the declaration. Out of all of us, she seemed to have the greatest physical fitness.

"Ya- Veteran. I think he's right." Hood said, shaking her head slightly and blinking as though to help herself focus.

"But we're so close! The meeting they're having is just a few blocks away!" Veteran whined, pointing off into the distance petulantly.

I stared at her face for a second, parsing her displeasure when a thought occurred to me. How exactly does one learn about a secret gang meeting?

"So? We can't take the whole gang on Vet. Especially not all beat up and tired like this." Hood pointed out.

"Seriously? Come on, these pricks are going to ruin Dads new-" Veteran complained angrily before her mouth snapped shut and she sent a glance my way.

"I didn't hear anything." I said immediately, straightening up and putting my hands in the air in surrender.

Huffing at me, Veteran rolled her eyes then dragged Hood into a huddle where they proceeded to whisper furiously at each other. I could have probably made out what they were saying if I tried - they weren't honestly being _that _quiet - but it seemed rude so I didn't bother.

I was still trying to find a way to ask how Veteran had found out about this meeting without it sounding like I was trying to get information about her identity when a chill shook me, the breeze getting into the gaps in my clothes and making my body ache. Deciding I could put my question on the back burner for later, I gave up on the thought and stretched slightly.

Since the girls were still having an ostensibly private conversation by that point, I turned my eyes skyward, trying to guess how long we'd been at this using the position of the moon. I hadn't brought my cellphone with me, and I wasn't wearing a watch. Too much chance they'd break during a fight. So really stargazing was my only option for this.

Unless Hood's scythe had a built in clock. I wouldn't be surprised I guess.

I had just about decided to ask her about it when a flash of movement caught my eye. A man, standing tall in the moonlight atop a nearby building, staring down at us.

I blinked to try and ascertain what I was looking at, but by the time my eyes opened he had moved. And I don't mean he _'vanished' _because that would imply I could no longer see him, and more importantly, that he was probably a figment of my imagination. Which was a pity, because it would have probably been preferable to what actually turned out to be going on. No longer was the man standing in the distance. No, now he was standing right in front of me. Directly between myself and the huddled pair of Veteran and Hood. The girls, facing away as they were, never even noticed his approach, as my entire field of view was taken up by a white demon mask.

Sheer shock kept me frozen in place at first, staring dumbly at the man before me. Less than a second had passed but despite my physical state my mind latched onto the sight before me making out details. The military camo pants. The thick boots. The brace of grenades on his chest. _The live grenade in his hand. _

At that last thought, control of my body snapped back to me, and years of video games provided me with the only thing I could think to scream in a single word that would convey 'Oni Lee is attacking us and we are all going to die'.

"Grenade!" I screamed, even as I backpedaled, watching in muted terror as microseconds passed by at an almost sluggish pace. Veteran looked up at my shout, taking notice of the problem almost immediately - Hood was not so lucky. I had just enough time to see Veteran whirl around and cover Hood with her own body before the explosion rocked me backwards, picking me up and slamming me into a nearby wall.

I had no idea how grenades killed people. From an objective standpoint, I knew there was a blast wave of force and heat, which itself would propel the explosives payload outward. Said payload was usually small flechettes of metal. In video games grenades charred everything in a given area black, killed you, and left you staring at the ceiling or the bottom half of someone elses character while you waited to respawn. It wasn't a particularly traumatizing experience, and even the lound noise and bright lights got kind of old if you stuck with it long enough.

Now all that said, I have no idea what happened to me. I was standing there, then there was a bright flash of light, and then next thing I knew I was...

I looked around blearily. I was only seeing out of one eye, which was worrying. I hurt everywhere, which was equally worrying. Dimly I could hear the sounds of yelling from nearby but it was so muted and quiet that I couldn't tell where it was coming from specifically. I couldn't even really lift my head to look further than my own navel which was... was...

My entire front side was toast. Not just 'cartoon charred grey' toast. But actually completely wrecked. My sweater and its accompanying underpadding - the best I could do for armor - were shredded, looking as though they had been set to roast over a fire and then thrust through a blender. My chest underneath it wasn't much better, the blast from the grenade having apparently impacted it so hard that I think my lungs might have collapsed under the pressure. The muscles in my torso heaved in protest as I desperately struggled to draw breath, a wet sucking noise being my only result.

Unable to move my head but desperate for a solution my eyes continued to roam, alighting on injury after injury. The pain of each one seeming to become apparent only after I had consciously acknowledged it. Forget my sweater, _I _looked like I had just gone through a blender. There was so much red I couldn't tell if I was bleeding or just seeing inside some of myself.

My search having turned up no immediate solution to my problems, and my vision rapidly darkening from a lack of oxygen, I managed to sort of wiggle in a way that let my head fall backwards, providing a slightly different view to scrabble at.

Unfortunately, instead of the life saving rush of my allies running towards me that I would have preferred to see, what lay ahead was not nearly so encouraging. In my hazy state of mind I had managed to forget _why _I was in such a sorry state.

In front of me with her expression a rictus of pain and rage, Hood was flailing her scythe inexpertly around her, each swipe ripping apart a clone of Oni Lee as it appeared and turning them to dust before their held grenades could detonate. She was clearly wounded, but not nearly so much as I was. At the very least she looked more battered than shredded. Her strikes seemed less like they were expertly placed and more just extremely lucky, relying heavily on the ridiculous size of her weapon to make large swathes of space into kill zones. Her mouth was moving and tears were streaming down her face but to me there was absolutely no sound. Just a high pitched keening.

I spared a thought for how that must work. Oni Lee was well known for his suicide attacks, utilizing his teleportation abilities residual (and temporary) clones to blitz his enemies with an infinite number of frag grenades. Even if Hood was killing them near instantly, at least one of them should have been able to detonate something by now. In that moment if I was thinking straight I probably would have just attributed it to a Thinker power or something and moved on, but my mind barely even got _that_ far before twitching towards my next most likely source of assistance.

Behind Hood's flailing form, Veteran lay in a state not dissimilar to my own, though she was laying on her side, a majority of the damage appearing over her back and shoulders. Despite how frantic I was feeling I couldn't help but notice that she wasn't moving.

I opened my mouth, praying I could call for help, reach for a cellphone, throw a brick, _anything. _But the best my battered body seemed capable of mustering was a strangled gurgle that took with it the last of the oxygen I had in my body.

I struggled to keep my eyes open, to maintain consciousness for as long as possible. I entertained the extremely brief and joking thought that Mom and Dad might get back together if they met at my funeral. Then the shadows at the edge of my vision began to grow, and I found myself coming to the bleak realization that I was going to die. I was going to die, and literally _no one _would notice. My mom would just think I'd left one night and never came back. And even then, she would probably only notice when the police arrived to fetch her, probably to identify my corpse.

Hood and Veteran were nice, in a friendly acquaintance sort of way, but even now Hood had little to no attention to spare for me, the little Cape that couldn't. Her entire focus was on Veteran. I was just a bonus. A sidecharacter in the narrative of her life and times.

Even Neptune probably wouldn't care that I was gone. Not after today.

You would think that realizing what a cosmic waste of space I was would have made me mad. Or... panic. But somehow all I could dredge up as my vision finally turned pitch black was a deep weariness. And then...

[**Destination**]...

[**Connection**]


	6. Shine (6)

I woke up to a surprising lack of pain.

That isn't to say I felt _no _pain, but rather that the sensations I _was_ experiencing existed well below what I should have felt as a result of... dying basically.

Although I suppose I might be hurting less because my soul was leaving my body. That was definitely a weird feeling. It was strange - when people who had nearly died in ambulances talked about near death experiences, it was always tunnels and lights and the loud silence and all that eldritch nonsense.

What _I _was getting was way different than that. The stars above were still as vivid and in focus as they had been while I was alive, and I could feel distinctly each individual bit of gravel beneath me. I was itchy all over too, the slow creeping coolness of my soul flowing over me doing nothing to reduce the sensation of a wound repairing itself as it flowed over me.

Was dying _supposed _to be this uncomfortable?

Wait. Was I actually _not _dead? I had been laying on my back for who knows how long, thinking I was about to exit stage left. The thing was, that was mostly because when I put some effort into it I could actually _feel _my soul. I had no idea _how _and couldn't even begin to describe all the theological implications of even definitively having one, but it was definitely _there._

_And it was healing me._

'Holy shit I have powers!' I shrieked internally. I had to tell Neptune! No wait, I wasn't talking to Neptune anymore. Shit. Veteran and Hood! Yes! I was a Cape! I could help fight Oni Lee and-

"Fuck!" I screeched, springing upwards with surprising force and sending myself sprawling two meters forward and into the wall on the opposite end of the alleyway. I almost sent myself careening in the other direction when I got both hands on the wall to lever myself up, freezing in place when the sheer stupidity of what I was doing occurred to me. I was basically flailing around like a loony tunes character dammit!

'Okay.' I told myself, struggling to maintain a state of mind as close to calm as I could manage.

'Okay so... I have super strength. So... a Brute.' I continued internally, trying not to get my hopes up. I couldn't think of a lot of Brutes who could come back from a state of being I would loosely describe as 'exploded' as quick as I apparently had. That had to be worth something. Experimentally, I began to slow push against the wall I was on, the slight push apparently more than enough to lever me onto my feet. I couldn't really feel a way to 'turn off' my newfound strength, and I could already feel a headache coming along at the idea of finding ways to limit myself in gym class or even just normal daily life.

I was going to have to be careful with that.

'Powers later, team mates now!' I mentally yelled at myself as the faint haze of confusion finally fell away from me and I became fully cognizant of my situation. Taking a deep breath, I spent a second getting myself oriented, making sure I wasn't going to send myself flying into another wall.

Unfortunately, that single second was more than enough time to survey my surroundings, an action that left me nearly dizzy with nausea. There were bits of gore _everywhere._ Between when I had blacked out and now, the alleyway looked like it had undergone a small war, with huge holes blasted into the nearby buildings that opened the area up significantly and left hunks of brickwork strewn about the place. Hood's scythe was embedded in a nearby wall not too far away from where I had woken up, and I had to thank whatever luck I had left in this lifetime that I'd managed to avoid being ripped in half by the damn thing. At the center of it all was a single huge scorch mark that I took to be the site of the explosion that had finished the fight. A scorched pair of legs and boots were melted to the ground at the epicenter of the obvious detonation, and I nearly blacked out again at the sight.

The place looked like a cross between a slaughterhouse and a war zone, so much so that it was amazing how lacking in bloodstains I apparently was.

Every time I tried to turn away and move on from that observation, it would jump back out at me again. No matter which direction I whipped my head in there were bits of human being languishing in the cool night air. I continued in that fashion for another precious series of moments before I had to close my eyes and count to ten, reopening them to look for Hood and Veteran. I could figure out how or why Oni Lee had managed to blow himself up later. Or at least I _hope_ Oni Lee blew himself up. It would really suck if he was just waiting in the shadows, watching for an opportunity to explode the obvious Brute on the scene.

Settling in to my self appointed task, I oriented myself on the rear of the area. The two girls I had been with lay in that direction, much further away from Oni Lee's... corpse... than I would have expected. Hood was laying across Veteran not to differently from how the blond had protected her from the original explosion that took her out. I would have appreciated the irony of that fact if the pair didn't look basically exactly as messed up as I had been just a bit earlier. Hood was breathing at least, if only shallowly, but Veteran...

Veteran wasn't.

Quickly shuffling forward, I knelt gently down next to the pair, trying desperately to remember my first aid training, even as the part of my mind that maintained rationality pointed out that they didn't teach high school students how to treat victims of _explosions._ There was _literally_ nothing I could do for either of them.

Or... there shouldn't be, but the minute my mind turned towards helping them a deluge of _information_ sprung forward. As a result of long hours trolling PHO, I knew that most Capes had a sort of default knowledge of how their powers worked. You didn't just wake up one day with powers you had no idea how to control or work with. There was an instinctive grasp of how they were intended to behave, if not necessarily the most effective way of using them. And right now my power was telling me that there _was_ something I could do.

My... soul... was a manifestation of potential energy. I think anyway. By unlocking it or... no _synchronizing_ with it properly, I could use that potential energy. I could condense it down into an almost physical form, using it to nourish my body, to enhance my physique, to protect and to attack. But that energy itself _wasn't_ my power. From what I could gather, unlocking my uh, energy, was a function of my power - but it was the understanding and manipulation of this energy on an instinctual level that my power provided me. In a sense, I wasn't a _Brute_ but a _Thinker_.

Completely unbidden, I lurched forward, slapping a palm across the motionless form of Veteran, senselessly groping around for _her_ energy, _her _potential. The second I tried it snapped into focus. A vast well of power laying just out of reach. There was a tenuous strand of... something... connecting it to her, one that grew narrower and less able to move power the longer I watched. Without even really considering the side effects of doing so I thrust my own power forward, using my hand on the girls head as a bridge. With lightning speed my own power flowed outward, reinforcing that narrow tether and forcing it wider and wider.

The blondes physical form began to glow as I worked, a bright yellow shimmer spreading across her that would have been beautiful if it didn't highlight how wounded she obviously was. Wounds, I realized, that _weren't_ healing. Shit. Why the hell wasn't she getting better? I unlocked her soul or whatever, so she should start breathing any minute now right?!

Staring in confusion at what was quickly becoming a corpse, it dawned on me that healing using this power might be a skill and not just... automatic. I'd already come to the conclusion that my Thinker power gave me mastery over it, but that didn't mean an unconscious person who had never used it before would be able to use it to heal themselves.

"Shit fuck shit!" I cursed, before plunging onward. Hood could wait, she was at least _breathing_. Veteran on the other hand... the brain can only survive for four minutes or so without oxygen. I'd learned that from an Earth Aleph movie, but I _really_ hoped it was accurate. I might save the girl only to get back someone brain dead.

But I still had to try _something_.

With as much skill as I could manage - which wasn't much - I dipped into my own reserves of energy, feeling the steadily decreasing pool of power there begin to rapidly diminish as I plied it towards healing Veteran.

Or well, I say 'healing' but I honestly had no idea how this was supposed to work. I wasn't Panacea so I had no idea what my power was actually doing, instead I was just sort of pressing it forward with the intent to heal and praying. I was so focused on the futile task that I actually started backward slightly when Veteran shuddered once and then took in a single haggard breath.

"Yes!" I cheered, only to be forced to scramble backward when the wild eyed girl lunged forward, swinging a fist into me, mere inches in front of my face. Before she had even finished the movement she began to cough and hack, spitting up great globs of blackish red goo that I suspected was probably the blood she had been choking on.

"Wuh- I- New Guy? _Ruby!"_ Veteran coughed out in a daze, gazing around her for a second before her eyes fell on her team mate and her pupils shrunk down to pinpricks.

"Rubes? Hey come on, wake up, what am I gonna tell Dad if - I never meant..." She babbled in a panicky way, rolling over onto her knees and shaking the smaller girl slightly. I made a mental note in the back of my head that either Veteran didn't have the improved strength the energy gave _me_, or the strength was another active ability that my power had simplified for me.

I pointedly _did not_ make a mental note of what Veteran was calling Hood.

"I got it." I rasped hoarsely, releasing a breath I didn't realize I was holding and standing up. Veteran sent me a terrified but hopeful glance as I spoke, and I quickly shuffled over to the last member of the group to examine her. Glancing at Veteran for permission, I slowly extended a hand to place a finger against the side of the smaller girls neck, my senses ranging out to examine her energy pool. It was smaller than Veterans, but the connection to it she possessed was much more stable. If I had to hazard a guess, the connection I was sensing was probably an indicator of how close to death someone was. I mean, if what I was working with was basically 'soul power' then it made sense that a dead or dying person would have a weaker connection to it. Your soul leaves your body after you die after all. I probably would have made that observation earlier, especially backed by my instinctive understanding of this stuff, but I had been significantly more panicked about Veteran than I was about Hood. The smaller girl was pretty hurt - she was pretty torn up by the explosion that had taken Oni Lee - but she apparently had avoided anything_ immediately_ lethal.

I was just about to widen her soul connection as I had done with Veteran when a thought occurred to me. Did I _have_ to do that to heal someone, or could I conduct my own power through her for healing without her own soul as a bridge?

Figuring it couldn't hurt to try it out, I once more dipped into my own power. It was getting dangerously low at this point, but as far as I could tell running out wouldn't be immediately lethal or anything so I would worry about _that _later. This time, instead of my patient glowing, _I_ did, or rather, because Hood wasn't glowing like Veteran had, I actually had the opportunity to notice that I _too_ was glowing. On the one hand, that was pretty cool, and my healing was definitely having an effect soothing, the girls breathing and quickly knitting her wound shut. On the other hand, if I was going to literally glow every time I used it, then I _definitely_ couldn't try to use it in my civilian life. It would probably be _very_ noticeable.

Dragging myself from my thoughts, I nearly fainted when I finished healing Hood and leaned away, my energy more or less completely used up. I was going to have to come up with a better way to refer to it though. If I went around exclaiming about my inner power all the time I was going to sound like a weirdo who watched too many cartoons.

Soul Power? Nah, better stay away from that one. The Endbringers might have drastically reduced the power of organized religion but that didn't mean the church didn't still exist. Best not to get caught saying I can muck about with souls in that case. Aura? Yeah that could work. It would also obscure exactly how complex my power actually was. If I boiled it down enough then my powers _looked_ like 'glowy regenerator' from the outside. Maybe if-

"Mm-Yang? It's too early, let me go back to sleep..." Hood grumbled as she came awake and Veteran - nope still not remembering any names - scooped her up into a big hug.

"Rubes! Oh my god! You are never coming out with me ever again!" She cried, clinging to the smaller girl like she never intended to let go. I wondered if they were maybe just a tad bit closer than 'friends' given the way the blond was reacting. Actually, that would explain a lot.

I wasn't disappointed by that realization I swear.

"Ehem." I faux coughed to draw the girls attention. It didn't work at first so I frowned and did it again.

"EHEM!" I said aloud, finally getting the pair to turn towards me.

"What!?" Yang hissed at me, obviously displeased by my interruption.

"I'm pretty sure we just killed Oni Lee so uh... we should probably run?" I pointed out. I promised myself I could curl up into a ball and cry about this when I got home. I might have superpowers now but that didn't mean I was all that intent on getting eaten alive by Lung. That thought made me pause.

Oh my god Lung. He was going to freak out when he found out his top lieutenant was dead - however the hell that happened. No wait, freak out later. Run away now. That said...

"Actually, Hood, how the hell _did_ Oni Lee die?" I asked, gesturing for the two girls to follow me as I rose and started to exit the alleyway.

"I dunno actually. I was just swinging wildly at him for a while and then it looked like he finally had me - then something happened and we both sort of just blacked out for a second. I think he might have forgotten to teleport and blown himself up." Hood said pensively as she extricated herself from Veteran's grip and stepped over to me, wincing slightly as she did so.

"Serves him right." Veteran growled, glaring at the spot in the alley where the man had obviously died. She said that, but even at a glance I could tell that she was visibly perturbed by what she was seeing. So much so that I was beginning to wonder why _I_ wasn't freaking out. I mean, I was definitely going to be having nightmares about this but it felt like if I wanted to I could dam the whole thing up and just not think about it. Adrenaline maybe?

"Do you have a power that could do that?" I asked curiously, looking back over my shoulder at the two while I waited for a reply.

"Not... really..." Hood said hesitantly, trailing off and looking ahead of me to the mouth of the alley. I blinked, following her gaze back around to look in front of me.

Only to find myself face to face with what I could only really describe as a giant demonic creature made of coiled flesh and teeth. It's maw was mere inches from my nose, and dripped with saliva, like it was painfully, _desperately_ hungry. I could feel myself go temporarily cross eyed at the sight, and heard the clicking whir of machinery as Hood's scythe thing shifted forms behind me, clearly having been pulled out of the wall as we passed it.

"Wha-" I got out, intending to ask 'What the fuck' but not getting all that much further before the hell beast shifted away from me to reveal a group of people standing to either side of it.

Along with two more demon things.

"Hi! Name's Tattletale. Short, sweet, _rolls off the tongue._" One of them said chipperly stepping forward and thrusting a hand out. I'd have found the quote cute coming from the extremely pretty blond (Okay so I might have a type), if it weren't for one simple fact - if she'd heard me say _that_ she'd _also_ probably heard me say my actual god damn name. A name I had spoken aloud when I wasn't even a freaking cape, because I didn't really think it would matter.

I stared blankly at her for a second, secondary parts of my brain taking in the skin tight purple bodysuit she was wearing and filing the image away for later. The second I thought as such she quirked a brow at me and rolled her eyes, her expression shifting to a piercing gaze that felt like I was being completely deconstructed in her minds eye.

Then she _smiled_ at me, and there was absolutely nothing comforting about it.

Fuck.


End file.
